


super dead

by mothwrites



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, basically jacobi died in the incident described in TTBOT, ghost au, guardian angel trope a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 19:23:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11812587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothwrites/pseuds/mothwrites
Summary: “I’m not a hallucination.” They have this argument at least once a week. “How long is it gonna take for you to come to terms with that?”“I still need a corporeal second-in-command,” Kepler says, not rising to it. “Someone I can actually put on payroll. Someone who I can talk to in public without looking criminally insane.”





	super dead

“You need to cut the red wire,” a voice says helpfully. “Go on. I know you can’t hear me, but something’s got to get through _somehow._ Haven’t you ever seen a movie? The red wire. It’s not hard. It’s a really, insultingly simple bomb. Still,” the voice continues, “if you die here, at least I’ve got company.”

“Could you stop talking for a second?” Kepler asks, too tired to be bothered by the fact that he’s talking into thin air. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

An extremely surprised man swims into view. He’s beautiful, and slightly transparent, and apparently just as confused as Kepler is. They stare at each other for a second.

“You can _see_ me?” the man asks. And then: “for fuck’s sake, cut the red wire already.”

“Sure, if you want me to blow this building up,” Kepler says, switching back into the mindset he needs to get out alive, poltergeists be damned. “I know what I’m doing.”

“No, you _don’t,_ ” the man says, suddenly looking offended. He floats around to Kepler’s right side and points at the offending wire. “Look, I am a goddamn ballistics expert, all right? Top of the class. And if you want to get out alive, you’ll listen to me. And I _want_ you to get out alive, because for some reason you are the only person in the world who can actually _see_ me. _So cut the red wire already_.”

Kepler takes a second to take in this man, who sounds desperate, but his expression as he studies the bomb is true and firm. He knows what he’s talking about.

He cuts the red wire.

“Good choice,” the man says. The clock stops with 15 seconds to go. “But they’re still coming for you. _Run._ ”

“What about you?” Kepler asks.

The man smiles sadly. “I can’t leave,” he says.

Footsteps echo through the empty chambers around them. No time for questions, really. But he can’t help himself.

“What’s your name, friend?”

“Daniel.”

“Daniel?”

“Jacobi. Daniel Jacobi.” Daniel looks from the exits to Kepler, and then back again. “ _Please_. No point in keeping you alive if you get shot ten seconds later. Just _go_.”

Kepler stands up, scans the room, and knows he’s right. “Thank you for the help, Daniel.” He wants to shake his hand, but the incorporeal man vanishes as his pursuers burst into the room.

He smiles. “Well, gentlemen,” he says, and then the carnage starts.

*

A few hours later; after he’s finished washing blood out of his hair and out from under his nails, and he’s relaxing in a Goddard-owned safe-house, Kepler fires up his laptop and searches for a name.

_Daniel Jacobi; beloved brother and son, lost to us in a tragic accident this August. Daniel was an MIT graduate who loved his friends, his country, and his work in orbital ballistics._

There was a photo attached: a smiling man in a band t-shirt and jeans, leaning against a laboratory table. The man who had guided him through defusing a bomb just hours before. He’d died too young. All that wasted potential got under Kepler’s skin and for days afterwards, he couldn’t get the image out of his mind.

*

Another day, another break-in and extraction, another bomb. Is it even a bomb? No, a god damn _monstrosity –_ all wires and C4 and Kepler has no idea how to even _begin_ to take it apart. He’d like to do the manly thing and run for his life, but there’s not enough time.

For what feels like the hundredth time, Kepler makes a mental note: he needs to hire a fucking ballistics expert.

“Daniel,” he says, feeling ridiculous. He’s nowhere near the abandoned warehouse in Ohio where he’d most likely hallucinated a dead graduate student a few months back. “ _Daniel Jacobi,_ ” he says again, “God help me, if you’re in any way able to hear this, you _will_ answer me.”

Nothing happens. Of course nothing happens, this is real life, he doesn’t have a fucking _guardian angel –_

“Whoah,” Daniel says. “This isn’t Ohio.” He whips around, staring wildly at his surroundings, and then back at Kepler. “Who the fuck _are_ you?”

“I’m _out of time,_ ” Kepler growls. “If you’re really the expert you claim to be, I need you to be _focused_ right now.”

Daniel snaps to attention, automatic obedience focused directly at _him_ , and it’s. Well. Kepler files that away as something to think about when he’s not just about to die.

“I _am_ an expert,” he says, and moves to look at the bomb.

Kepler watches his eyes widen and his smile drop.

“I’m an expert who needs ten minutes,” Daniel amends.

“You have two,” Kepler says, and rolls back his sleeves so he can be the ghost’s hands. “Let’s get to work.”

*

Daniel follows him around, after that. He’s fascinated: Warren Kepler is not only the only person in the world who can see him, but he can even go where Kepler goes. He’s no longer stuck in the ruins of his old laboratory, both haunting and haunted. It’s only where Kepler goes, though. For some reason he’s tied to this man.

He can’t say he minds.

“God, are you still looking at ballistics experts?” he says one day, putting air quotes around the words ‘experts’. “Why? You have me!”

Kepler looks up from the various personnel files on his desk. “Petulant,” he comments, and Daniel grins. He knows he is. It’s hard not to feel spoiled by someone when they’re literally the only person in your life. “One day you might not be there when I call,” Kepler says, still casually browsing the files. “Or one day I might stop hallucinating you, and then where would I be?”

“I’m not a _hallucination.”_ They have this argument at least once a week. “How long is it gonna take for you to come to terms with that?”

“I still need a _corporeal_ second-in-command,” Kepler says, not rising to it. “Someone I can actually put on payroll. Someone who I can talk to in public without looking criminally insane.”

“In space,” Daniel says thoughtfully, “no-one can hear you talk to ghosts.”

Kepler throws a pen at him. It flies right through his torso, and hits the door.

“You’re not coming into space.”

“Of _course_ I am,” Daniel says, with a grin. “Someone has to keep an eye on you. Your _guardian angel,_ ” he quips.

Kepler looks around on his desk for something else to throw at him, and then writes it off as a lost cause. In a very delayed, somewhat panicked reaction after Daniel’s second appearance, he had made the mistake of theorising out loud that his new ghostly acquaintance was an angel. Suffice to say, Daniel had _not_ let it go.

“Don’t scowl at me,” Daniel says, still beaming. “I take my angelic duties very seriously.”

Kepler’s stapler hits the door.

*

He doesn’t hire a ballistics expert. He _does_ hire an AI specialist. Her name is Alana Maxwell, and Daniel is inordinately fond of her. If anyone has a guardian angel in this company, it’s Dr Maxwell.

Kepler is _not_ jealous. He gets it. Dr Maxwell also went to MIT. They both hold similar places on the Kinsey scale and the autism spectrum. She watches the same kind of movies and makes the same kind of jokes. Had things been different, they would have almost definitely been close friends.

He’s not jealous.

“Isn’t she the greatest?” Daniels says one day, practically _cooing_ at Dr Maxwell from the space where he’s floating next to Kepler. She, of course, has no idea he’s there. “Go on, tell her she did a good job. It would have taken anyone else days to infiltrate that program. Just say something nice.”

“Quiet,” Kepler growls, then immediately regrets it as Dr Maxwell jumps and her eyes grow a little wider. Fuck. He doesn’t actually want her to be terrified of him all the time. Half of the time would suffice. “Sorry,” he says, and motions to his ear. “Earpiece. Good work, doctor. Leave the reports on my desk.”

“Yes sir,” she says, and places a small file on his desk. She can’t help herself looking curiously at him and his distinct lack of a visible earpiece as she leaves. When the door closes, his forehead hits the desk and he groans.

“Sorry,” Daniel says, not sounding at all apologetic. “I thought you were used to it by now.”

*

Daniel makes it his mission to get Dr Maxwell to notice him. Much to Kepler’s surprise, it appears to be working. Maxwell stops working right through the night as much as she used to; or at least, she takes more breaks, usually after Daniel’s spent an hour murmuring suggestions in her ear. He’s figured out that he can vaguely influence people by talking to them if he tries really hard and if Kepler’s nearby to keep him grounded. So when Maxwell turns up in Kepler’s office late one night, looking confused and holding a mug of peppermint tea, Kepler isn’t as surprised as he should be. He quirks an eyebrow in her direction, but actually directs it at the ghost behind her.

“It’s been a stressful day and you’ve already had like, five cups of coffee,” Daniel says. “Caffeine poisoning is a real thing, you know.”

Maxwell says something similar, but there’s no way she should have known his caffeine intake: they work in different parts of the building and he hasn’t seen her all day. He thanks her warmly, and then pointedly frowns at Daniel when she leaves.

“You’re _welcome,_ ” Daniel says, a little peeved.

“Do we need to talk about the ethics of mind-controlling my employees?”

“It’s not _mind control,_ ” Daniel protests. “She already wanted to do something to help. I just gave her a suggestion.”

“How long did it take you?” Kepler asks, interested despite his disapproval.

Daniel shrugs. “Maybe half an hour. I was telling her some stories too. Only right that she should have to tune out long stories from both her teammates, right?”

Maxwell’s too clever - it takes her less than two days to come to him with a question and a concerned look: _Who’s Daniel Jacobi?_ Or, not exactly _who_ \- she knows _who_ he is, he has a sneaking feeling she hacked his personal files and found his wealth of information on a dead man - but who he is to _Kepler._ He smiles, just a little, just to let her know that she’s found something. And then doesn’t answer her.

Daniel gives him _hell,_ but Kepler ignores him. He doesn’t want to share.

*

“You look stressed,” Daniel comments, appearing out of the blue one day and almost making Kepler drop his tumbler of whiskey.

“You’re the cause,” Kepler grits out, but he can’t lie to himself and say he’s not pleased to see him. It had been a while. “Don’t jump out at me like that.”

“Sorry,” Daniel says. He circles Kepler, a concerned look on his face, surveying every frown line and bruise on the other man. “Tell me what’s wrong?”

Kepler takes a soothing sip of whiskey. “Highly classified.”

“Who am I going to tell? The secret Goddard union of ghost employees?” He quips, but reaches out a hand to Kepler’s face. If he concentrates hard enough, he can feel it; cool and slightly calloused on his skin. “Warren. Come on, what is it? Can I help?”

“Do you see a bomb in here?”

“Please?”

Kepler sighs, and sets the glass down on his kitchen table. “You may as well know. We received a distress call this morning. From the Hephaestus.”

“The nightmare station?”

“The nightmare station,” Kepler confirms. “The station no-one comes back from.”

“Are you going to the nightmare station?”

“ _We_ are going to the nightmare station.” He looks up at Daniel from over his glass. “Unless you’ve found someone else to haunt.”

Daniel shakes his head, floating in front of him. Warren wonders how a ghost will cope in zero-gravity, tries not to imagine how beautiful the silver man will look in starlight.

“Never,” Daniel says. “When do we leave?”

 *

Only Selberg is left alive when they get there. Kepler tells the man - the snivelling, pathetic excuse for a scientist, the _failure_ \- that Isabel Lovelace’s shuttle flew into the star. If it saddens him, he doesn’t show it. He only nods and waits for further instructions.

There’s a body bag in the medical bay. As Kepler berates Selberg, Daniel wanders over to it, eyes searching intently. “I’m sorry,” he says, but he’s not looking at the body any longer. His eyes are fixed on a point a little ways above him. He does, in fact, look apologetic. “No, I know. We know.” He stops, considering. “I’m not sure,” he says, after a moment. “I don’t think so. Not after this. I don’t know, really, I’m just a spectator. I’ll haunt the shit out of him if you want.”

Warren realises he’s stopped talking to listen to him, and Selberg’s eyes follow him uneasily to look at the (empty, for him) spot where Daniel floats. The ghost nods silently, listening to the other half of a conversation that Warren can’t see or hear.

“Get in the shuttle,” Warren barks at Selberg, jerking his head towards the docking bay. His team will clean up and take the essentials from the laboratory. He wants Selberg out of his sight, and he wants to know who Daniel is talking to.

“If he’s not here, then he’s… you know,” Daniel says. “Beyond, or whatever.”

Warren lingers in the background, under the pretence of downloading the ship’s last reports from an AI system that’s on its last legs. It beeps mournfully at him as he extracts the files.

“I don’t know,” Daniel says in the background, rubbing the back of his neck and shuffling his feet. “I’m sorry - I really am, but I actually don’t _know._ I’ve never tried. But I think…” he looks at Warren, just for a second, and then looks away just as quickly. “I think if you really focused on the person you’re looking for _,_ you’d be able to get there. Just concentrate on him.”

“Daniel,” Warren says quietly.

“I’m coming,” Daniel says, and then turns his attention back to the other ghost. “Oh, yeah. I don’t know how, it just happened.” He pauses, listening, and then sighs, shaking his head. “Sorry. They would be on the shuttle, right? So they’ll be gone now. I’d say I’d take a message for you, but…” he gestures at his own incorporeal silver form, a wry smile on his face.

“Daniel,” Warren says again, more insistently. “Is it the Captain?”

Daniel shakes his head. “No. Fourier.”

 _Damn._ “What does she want?”

“What do any of us want?” Daniel suddenly snaps, uncharacteristically serious. “She wants to _leave._ To move the fuck _on._ I don’t blame you,” he says, in a gentler voice, looking away from Kepler. “Focus, okay? There. You’re starting to fade already. Go on. Go find them.”

He stays there for a while, murmuring encouragement, until there’s a faint glow in the air and then… nothing. The air snaps around them, just slightly, just enough to be noticeable. Daniel turns back to him, and his expression makes Warren’s breath catch in his throat.

_What do any of us want?_

“Done?” he asks, as brusquely as he can manage.

Daniel nods. “She’s gone.”

“Anyone else?”

“I don’t think so. She wanted to be with them.” He shakes himself, blinking back phantom tears, then straightens up. “Call me if you find a bomb,” he says, and disappears.

Later, on the journey home, Warren thinks about death. _Daniel Jacobi, beloved brother and son -_ he had visited the memorial site, once, on Daniel’s request, but the ghost turned silent and sullen once they reached the place, and after they left, Warren didn’t see him for a week. _He loved his friends, his country, and his work in orbital ballistics. What kind of half-assed eulogy is that?_ Daniel had scoffed, looking over his shoulder at Warren’s laptop. At the cemetery, the little headstone was dusty, and there were no flowers. Going from the visitor logbook, no-one had come to see him in a long time.

 _Are you going to write something?_ Daniel asked him, breaking the silence of the graveyard.

 _Why would I? You’re right here with me._ He’d felt awkward, hands in his pockets. _Should I have brought flowers?_ he joked, but Daniel didn’t laugh.

*

“Do you want to talk about it?” Warren asks, much, much later. They’re in his office. Daniel comes and goes much less frequently, these days.

“What?” Daniel asks, staring at the floor like a moody teenager.

 _About what you want._ “About the ghost you met on the Hephaestus. You helped her… move on, right?”

Daniel nods.

“Do you want to move on? Is that why you’re never here any more? For God’s sake, talk to me. I’m not a mind-reader, Daniel.”

“Just a clairvoyant,” Daniel jokes, but he doesn’t sound amused. “No, I don’t want to _move on._ ”

“Why?” It’s the natural progression of things, after all. People live, they die, they go… beyond. So he’s told.

“Because it fucking terrifies me, all right?” Daniel snaps, finally deigning to look at him. “She had _people._ People to go and meet. The guy she was in love with was waiting for her. I’ve got _no-one_ over there, save maybe a few great-grandparents I never knew. I had my fair share of being alone in Ohio, I don’t _want_ -” he stops, struggling with himself, eyes wide and almost sorrowful behind the sudden anger. “Why? Do _you_ want me to leave? Bored of having a pet ghost?”

“No,” Kepler says immediately, soothingly. “Calm down. I never said that. I’m only worried about you.” _You’ve got no-one. You’ve got me, which might be worse._ He’s struck with the thought that Daniel never talks about anyone; not his parents or siblings, old friends from his old life, old boyfriends. His world is Kepler, and sometimes Maxwell, but she can’t even see him. He realises now, for the first time, how incredibly lonely that must feel. “Is there anything I can do?”

Daniel shakes his head, and floats a little closer. Warren wouldn’t have known what to do even if the man in front of him were flesh and blood, but he lays a careful hand along the silver line of the man’s cheek.

“Can you feel that?” he asks.

“I remember what it feels like,” Daniel says, which isn’t really an answer.

*

Daniel watches him work, and train, and kill, and every other messy human action, so it should come as no surprise that he also turns up on the one night Warren decides to blow off a little steam at a shitty nightclub out of town. There’s a man’s lips on his throat as he locks eyes with the ghost, who looks… disappointed.

Warren jerks his head slightly, saying, _not now,_ like a preoccupied college roommate. Daniel leaves in an instant. Later, he drives home alone. The man he’d picked up at the bar was more than willing to come with him, enthusiastic, but he let him down gently with a smooth smile and a few pretty but empty words. It’s 2am when he unlocks his front door, and Daniel’s there on his sofa, like he’d been waiting for him to come home.

“Sorry about earlier,” Warren says casually, going into the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

“My fault,” Daniel says. “You didn’t bring him home.” It sounds like a question.

“Not tonight,” Warren shrugs, then looks at him, sighs. “You’re upset. Out with it.” He doesn’t want to do this now - he’s tired, he’s a little buzzed, there’s an itch that didn’t get scratched that he’ll have to get rid of on his own, and he’d rather not do that with this hanging over his head.

“I want to be alive,” Daniel says.

It’s out of nowhere - or, is it? Of course he wants to be alive, of course he wants to go home. But he never _says_ it, and why now? “Any particular reason, today?” Warren asks, already knowing why but not quite daring to assume it.

Daniel looks him in the eye. “I want to be able to do that for you.” He doesn’t need to specify what. He’s floating millimetres away, now, eyes searching and _wanting_. It’s addicting. It’s pointless.

Warren holds his gaze. “For me?”

“With you,” Daniel clarifies. “With anyone, God, I want someone to fucking _touch_ me again, but… you specifically, yeah.”

“I would like nothing more,” Warren promises, and if the situation were normal, this would be the moment where he pulls the other man to him, kisses him, _claims_ him. But his fingers trail through Daniel’s arms like water and he clenches his fist.

“So I’m not the only one who’s suffering,” Daniel says, a smirk beginning to form on his face as he presses even closer. The lines of his body blur with Warren’s.

“Tease,” Warren growls, but there’s no heat behind it, only longing.

Daniel inclines his head. “What would you do if you could touch me?” he asks, like a dirty text message, practically batting his eyelashes. Warren tries to steel his resolve.

He fails.

“It’s like phone sex, right?” Daniel says not too much later, laughing softly as Warren pants into the crook of his arm, the other wrapped around his dick and pumping hard as Daniel murmurs in his ear. “You’re gorgeous. I could watch you do this all day.” He’s still dressed - he can’t even undress, can’t even touch himself, but the view nearly makes up for it. “If I was here, you could do anything to me,” he promises. “I’d let you do anything, _God,_ I want to make you feel good. I want that to be my hand, I want to suck you off, I want to ride you -” he stops, beaming as Warren loses control and comes over himself, his mind on fire. “Yeah, _fuck,_ that’s it.”

“ _Daniel_ ,” Warren gasps as he finishes. It’s not the first time he’s come with the ghost’s name on his lips, but the others were all lonely, desperate moments in the shower or in the middle of the night, it’s the first time the other man has been around to see it. To join him. But he’s still alone, still technically just jerking off, it doesn’t change anything, he can’t fall in love with a dead man -

“I’m here,” Daniel says softly, and maybe he can.


End file.
